Coming in 2011--The Grand Reveal

Wow, I didn't realize that I didn't make a single post in October! Poor October--usually it's one of my favorite months, but I'm guessing surely most of you have figured out the reason for the blogging hiatus.

If you didn't, here's a clue:



If that doesn't help, maybe this will:)

To say we were caught off guard is in the running for the understatement of the year. It's kind of hard to get pregnant if you don't ovulate, and ovulation has never been a specialty of mine. Not to mention that I haven't taken thyroid medication since April (until August! I am taking it now!) I was on all my medication perfectly the last time this happened and tater tot never even had a heartbeat, so to say I was pessimistic about this going anywhere is also in the running for the year's understatement.

Right now, everything is swirling. I can think of about a bajillion women I think deserve this more than me and I'm struggling with the obnoxious fact that life is indeed not fair. It's not fair that they have to wait for their baby when I thought I was going to have to wait much longer than I actually did. Why can't it happen for them the same way it happened for me? My hormones are all over the map and Adam has been a champ about it all. He takes such wonderful care of me that I can't complain for a second! He should be in the running for the husband of the year! :)

So, now that the secret is out, hopefully the end of the year will see some more regular blogging again! I kind of miss it!

Stay Tuned

Right now life is happening faster than I can keep up with, and this blog is always one of the first things to slide. I really should get the rest of my trip to Utah typed up, before I forget, but it may be too late. I also finally got my camera back from my friend, so somewhere in here I'll load pictures too.

The move is catching up with us. It should be happening at the end of the month, but it may or may not happen sooner. Every weekend in September is booked, so it's not looking good.

Eventually I'll let you all in on everything that's going on, but there just isn't time right now.


Sorry guys.

The Great Trek Out West--Part 1

It's time I finally updated the blog with my recent trip to Utah and back. I am super lucky I got to go and SO very grateful!


My brother got his mission call back in May and for whatever reason, wasn't called to go into the MTC until August. It very unfortunately fell on the day before the first day of school, which is inconvenient, given that my Mom is a teacher and my Dad is a school bus driver. I tried to convince them Mark and I could drive out ourselves and that I'd be okay on my way back through, but they weren't having it. We ended up compromising on Dad missing the first two days of school and the 3 of us going together.

Mark scheduled his farewell a week ago Sunday, the 15th and we scheduled ourselves to leave bright and early Monday morning, the 16th. Everybody had a blast and a half at his "wild" farewell party and he hugged every Mormon girl in Crawford county, I'm pretty sure. I would be uploading the photographic evidence, except I unfortunately left my camera at my friend's house in SLC and she's mailing it back to me, so no pictures now :'( SAD DAY!

We got up at 6:00, since Mom had to for teacher in-service stuff anyway. In true Neely fashion, we were running about an hour late by the time we frantically got on the road. We had planned on taking my Mom's Focus, but she heard some funny sounds on Friday afternoon, and by Sunday afternoon, we decided to take the F-150 instead. SAD DAY AGAIN! I'm familiar with the Focus and it's of a similar size as Frances, but the F-150 is NOT! That pretty much stunk, because I was crazy nervous about driving that gigantic behemoth! :( Dad drove through Tulsa and somewhere in between Tulsa and Witchita, Mark took over and drove through Witchita and then some. Out in the sticks of Kansas, I took over and drove through the rest of Kansas and some of Nebraska. I can't tell you how much I love the out-in-the-sticks-USA! I have sworn I will never drive in a city bigger than Little Rock, and this trip totall reaffirmed that. Dealing with that dumb truck was enough; throwing in traffic would have been system overload for me. Mark and Dad split the rest of the driving. Our goal was to make it to Cheyenne, Wyoming, which would put us about 6 hours from SLC, which seemed perfect to me. The day had been completely (wonderfully) uneventful thus far, but when we got to Cheyenne, we discovered that every.single.hotel. in the freaking city was booked. Every.last.one.of.them. Lovely. We ended up driving another 45 miles to Laramie and squeaked into one of the last open hotels, an hour later and MUCH more tired than we planned on.

Tuesday morning, we got up and hit the road as early as possible and still ended up being half an hour later than we wanted to be. Mark drove out and I drooled over the scenery (even though I've since been told there's nothing there) I am TOTALLY in love with the Cheyenne/Laramie area now! Rawlins is not quite the half way point through Wyoming, so I took over there and drove all the way into Lyman, with the farther I got the worse the drive got. I had to deal with construction zones AND a few cities with traffic enough to make me nervous. I was FRAZZLED by the end and Mark was NOT helping at all. The day got progressively worse for me, starting with the driving in western Wyoming. We stopped at Lyman in particular, because that is the very first teaching job my Mom got, waaaaaayyy back in 1983! We ate at Taco Time, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, so all told Mom about it when we got to talk to her after school. She ate there herself, back in the day, which I thought was pretty cool. I also never realized what a hole in the wall Lyman was; for some reason I thought it was much bigger than it really is. Mark drove from Lyman all the way into SLC; looking back on it, he really should have given in to Dad just before we got into town, but oh well! Too late now! Mark didn't know how the streets work in SLC and we were looking for this clothing place one of his friends went to a few months ago. I had no idea they didn't know where the place even was! We ended up driving in circles around Temple Square for the large part of an hour until we accidentally found the place. My nerves were shot by this point. I was SO over the construction and traffic of Temple Square and SLC in general and ready to leave just about as soon as we'd gotten into town. I called my friend, frazzled, tried desperately to get her to where we were, which was its own adventure. Finally, she found us and I tried to come up with a plan for the rest of the day. I had made plans previously, but they were shattered into smithereens, when (in Kansas) I realized I forgot my temple bag, which contained...my temple recommend (I contemplated not telling you, because seriously...I am probably the only Arkansasan Mormon moron who goes all the way out to Utah without a temple recommend; at least I can say I've eaten my humble pie for the day...). I thought the plan had been to go visit our aunt who lives in Riverton Tuesday afternoon/evening, but by the time we got Mark and Dad a hotel (another detail I thought had been worked out, which hadn't...) we made plans to go out to eat and then try to magically get me into the SLC temple and do a session. Then my friend's husband pointed out we wouldn't have time to do both, so Mark and Dad chose to go on and do the session. I chose to go out to eat with my friends (I thought they would go to the temple with us, but forgot to ask beforehand, which adds ANOTHER detail I thought was worked out, but wasn't; this one was my own fault too! Oooops!) Mark guilted me about not going to the temple with him and I cried, but still went out to eat, since I was too embarrassed to admit I'd forgotten my recommend. I discovered In N Out Burgers are a small slice of fast food heaven.What I wouldn't give to have had one of those for dinner tonight. I also discovered the large slice of heaven that is named IKEA; my only complaint is that there isn't enough time in the day to explore it all.

Everything in Utah is...so...Mormon. I know this comes as shock to most of you, but even trying to prepare myself for the Mormonness, I was still shocked. The entire trip, I felt like country mouse in the big city....very slow and southern. I got a huge kick out of seeing a guy sitting down at In N Out and his garment band showing over the top of his khakis; that's not a sight you'll see in Arkansas anytime soon! It drives me up a wall that Draper, Oquirrh Mountain and Jordan River temples can all be seen from the interstate (we just want one! Why is that so much to ask!?!) Utah drivers have rightfully earned the title of "Utard" because they are the worst drivers I've ever seen. I know I haven't seen it all, but that just makes me more afraid to see any drivers worse than the Utards.

I think I will leave Wednesday and beyond for a second post after all. I hadn't planned on doing so, but it looks like I really should have!

I Have a Secret

It's driving people up a wall on Facebook, so I thought I would share the love.

We have a great, big secret.


And no, don't even comment if you're going to ask if I'm pregnant. Not this decade.


The secret is going to be revealed quite soon and I'm both excited and terrified. It means big changes. I don't know if I'm as ready as I want to be.

Jax's Take on Things

So Adam told you all of our wild and exciting day yesterday. I'll fill in some details.


The house was CUTE!! In a neighborhood I didn't even know existed, let alone considered before. It was also way cool to talk to his high school friend. She was totally awesome; we will be going to more of her open houses :)

Driving around anywhere between May and October around here is ridiculously hot. I've laxed WAY down on my fuel mileage obsession and I'm trying desperately not to get too tolerant to the A/C (what do you do when the highest setting is not enough!?!). Doug forgetting his medicine was a bummer, but it extended Pearce Brother Bantering which is always entertaining. I also called my Dad to wish him a happy Father's Day. He had to travel for the high council, but mom made him his favorite meal, so he was happy.

We goofed off and ate for the rest of the evening. Poor Mom Pearce has a rash or something that is making her itch, so we (Grandma and I; everyone else ate too much turkey and crashed on various couches and recliners) tried to distract her. It took me an hour to get Adam up, but eventually he did. For whatever reason he wandered outside and came back in. Not three minutes after that Katy burst upon the scene yelling quite loudly "GOTTA PEEEEEEEE!!!!!" which scared the dickens out of me because I was thoroughly confused (I thought it was somehow Adam coming back in, which would have been weird and physically impossible.) After that we were swept up in her whirlwind, when lo and behold, the phone rang and it was none other than Sylvia! The Pearce family house phone is really hard to hear on, and I have bad hearing anyway, and Katy was excitedly recounting her trip of too much caffeine and no rest stops, so things got really exciting with everyone yelling at the phone and each other. Sylvia called to wish her own father a Happy Father's Day and while he was on the phone with her, Katy got out his present that she brought from her Mexican cruise. It was this rockin' awesome sombrero.

Not too long after that, we decided we needed to head home, which is where the unexpected fun began. If you've ever read any of Dave Ramsey's books, he mentions that women (and women only) have a hidden security gland that is baffling to men; this is usually in reference to emergency funds, but given my history of car trouble, it's perfectly applicable to my automotive world. I'm therefore understandably paranoid about anything happening to Frances. It bugs me to no end that I wouldn't have noticed the weird noise at all; only because Grandma said something while Adam was looking for a place to pull over. I was ridiculously useless during the tire change, even cranky. Adam said something about nails in the tire and Grandma asked me what I'd been driving though. Anyway, the tire was changed and we booked it home because it was LATE at this point! This morning, Adam got up before I did and looked at the tire (and also finished fixing my blinker--I can legally turn left again! :-p ) He brought it in for me and this is what I found:


Whoa! You can see it's not pretty in this picture. But then, upon further examination (which consisted of Adam pulling the hole open while I took a picture) it looks even worse!



Holy Humongous Hole, Batman! How did that get there?!?! Needless to say, when we took it to a local discount tire shop (on Doug's recommendation) the guy looked at it for about 3 seconds before he said there was no way on Earth it was reparable. Le sigh. I have a new tire, but Frances is healthy again. She looked so crippled with the doughnut on! :(

Adam and I may be a socially awkward couple and work waaaaaay too much, but we have seriously got to find cheaper, less stressful forms of entertainment :-p

Let It Snow

Or ice. Whichever you prefer, I think we've gotten both within the last 24 hours.

The weather people have been talking about it all week and I thought it was another fake-out. Weather people are experts at fake-outs, so I tend not to take them very seriously. I called their bluff, and figured if anything happened, it would only happen in Fayetteville (they always get the weather!) The weather people pwn'd me, or got lucky, or both, because boy was I wrong!

Little Rock is under a solid sheet of ice now. We went out to play in it, but we're not going anywhere else for a while!

This is the view looking up our parking lot at the entrance.
This was Markham and University at 4:30ish.This is the ice hanging off a neighbor's Ford in a really cool way.

My Kitchen Adventures

I think I am falling in love with my cast iron skillet and my pyrex. And boneless, skinless chicken breasts. And spices. And it seems that what I'm cooking is decently edible (adam has tried one of the recipes I've attempted; I have two more waiting on him when he gets home) which is all sorts of exciting.

And then I found a recipe for baked bananas (well, stick the unpeeled banana in the oven @ 300 degrees for 15 minutes--I drizzled honey over it and have gone to heaven)

I think I'm learning how to cook!

100 Grand!

No, I don't have the money or the candy bar, but my whole "surprise" is that this post makes 100 posts since we started in January of 2008! Wow. I can't believe it took me (us) almost a year and a half to the 100 point, since I know some people blog that much and then some. But, our life isn't really as exciting as some, and that's okay, so I guess we're doing okay.

I wonder where we'll be another 100 posts from now?

The Big Adventure... We're Hobos!

So, I've left you all in suspense, wondering what it is we did and where it is that we went! I suppose I should go ahead and tell you, but I will show you first! :)

Here is the 'what we did part':



And here is the where we went part:


Yes. We totally slept in the Vibe. Adam made a joke about it when we test drove it, then it came up again when we started planning Indy in August. So, I had the brilliant idea that we should test it out in Dallas, especially since his sister and her husband left to go skiing. It worked out so well. It was a bit chilly, but it was so stuffy in the car that the windows still fogged up (okay, somebody, make the joke) so it wasn't a problem! :) And we each had enough room to roll over, which is more than I thought it'd be. The front passenger seat folds down as well, so Adam had extra room to stretch out, so that wasn't a problem! Who'dda thunk it? What kind of crazy people sleep in their car? And then brag about it!? Yeah that's us!

Also, I've never been to Louisiana before. I've lived in Arkansas my whole life and I've been to 43 other states in the country, but never managed Louisiana. I heard my brother say my parents were thinking about adding it over spring break (now) and I knew I had to beat them to it, so we cut across Texas when we left and drove straight into Shreveport, which is a huge deal to me, since I've now been to 44 states! Hooray!! So that's the big deal about the where we went!

And you thought we were so exciting ;-)

Surprise!

I can't keep secrets!!!

I'm not entirely sure why this is, but it's been a lifelong problem. But, like Alan and Jeni's comment on the last post, yes, a new post is needed, so here it is.


I'M PREGNANT!!!!!!

It's apparently a medical "miracle" ... or something...twice this year, two different doctors told me I would not be able to get pregnant without the help of fertility drugs, between the two major diseases I have, so we thought we were set. Obviously, we had been so far and the system seemed to be working pretty well, but God decided my ovaries needed to work this ONE month and, well, there you have it!

I found out a little over two weeks ago and we had planned on telling only immediate family until Christmas, when we would have made it official. But, people slipped, and now the cat's out of the bag, so we might as well announce it here.

Since we found out, and it was confirmed, we're both seeing babies EVERY-FREAKING-WHERE!!!! Everybody under the sun is pregnant, it seems like! Two other women at my church, two or three of Adam's motorcycle buddies, my manager, my sister-in-law's in-laws (like, a lot of them :) and a few people we went to church with in Conway! WOW! That's a lot of babies! Not everyone has found out yet, and at least half of our family found out through Facebook! :( Really, I had better plans for announcing it than that.... :)

As of right now, my due date is mid-July, and I keep hoping it's sooner than that, but I don't go to the OB until Thursday. I've already been to my thyroid doctor twice and will go to see her as often as I see the OB, to make sure that everything stays okay. That's our biggest worry, since thyroid disease increases the risk of miscarriage slightly compared to a completely normal pregnancy. All this means though, is that if anything happens, I'll just have to make another (less exciting) post, but I hope not!

So, now you all know :) Be on the lookout for the infamous belly bump (Adam's family's favorite joke is that I'll be 15 months pregnant with a 30lb baby in the middle of the summer in a van down by the river...darned them for getting at least two of them right; remember, this is ADAM'S child. Adam, who was a month late himself, is probably going to be causing trouble with this one too :-p )

Oh, and we're not finding out the gender, and I don't have the cool intuition thing that Mom Pearce does, so we're just going to call it Tater Tot until July, when we find out what it is for real :)

The Weekend Plans

Apparently I have a blogging disorder, as when I went to create this blog post, I typed one word, accidentally hit enter, which posted it and then realized I was still signed in on Adam's account, because this is his computer.

But, we got it all sorted out now, so we will continue with the regularly scheduled blog! :)

Adam and I started our weekend of date nights on Thursday night by borrowing a few more movies from the library and then by having an argument at the mall. From now on, I guess I will have to save the shopping for myself! But we gave it up, went back home and got the moto and rode out to Pinnacle Mountain. For those who may not know, Pinnacle Mountain is where he proposed and we started this whole mess ;-) We did not get to go there this year, since this year is Alma's rotation. It was a little bit weird seeing Pinnacle not on the 4th of July and we didn't hike it since it was so late, but it was so refreshing. After we left Pinnacle Mountain, we meandered our way back to Cheeburger-Cheeburger for our favorite shakes. This time, Adam got a grape flavored shake and a sprite and I got chocolate covered banana-cookie dough (I've been craving cookie dough all week long for a few certain reasons). There was the cutest little family there and we really liked playing with the two kids across the restaurant. The Mom was very, very pregnant, poor woman, and the Dad looked extremely young. It's so much fun to just sit and muse and people watch--especially since they were all staring at us, because we had all of our motorcycle gear. Then we came home and fell asleep watching John Cleese's How to Irritate People.

Today, we slept in like nobody's business (well, I woke up at 7:15, like I normally do, and was really irritated when I couldn't go back to sleep like I wanted) and it was glorious! Grandma made fried bread and Doug actually showed up! Amazing! Mom Pearce talked about her new kitchen all afternoon and we went shopping with her, while she's getting ideas of what she wants. It was kind of fun. We found a wedding present for some of Adam's friends (Loaded Questions!! Heck yeah!!) and then came back to the house for a bit before leaving again. We decided to go to the Big Dam Bridge and walk around. We felt rain drops and had talked about going somewhere else, so we didn't go all the way across, but instead we sat in the middle on the little park benches they have there. We talked about so many things and it was wonderful, until I spotted a huge (okay, it was huge to me anyway) arachnid and that kind of killed things. So we headed back, since we were feeling more rain drops (but not seeing any rain clouds or anything) but decided to go play at the "beach" part instead of leaving. It was awesome! The water was warm and we wrote in the sand with sticks. A man a little bit down from us caught a fish and let me watch him take it off and almost throw it back in the river (he said it was the wrong kind for him, but some other people asked him if they could have it). It was definitely cool! Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures, because Adam forgot the camera in the car...Oops!

Before this novel gets any longer, I will stop for now. I have a surprise for Adam (he doesn't have any idea what it is, and unfortunately I can't tell any of you either, since he'd see it, hehe) so soon we will have a much larger, more exciting post. But it's wonderfully relaxing to spend the weekend with your best friend with no plans in mind.

Suprise!

I have given it some thought (and have been relishing in the comments) and I decided not to kill it. It just bugs me that all the blogs I stalk all have many comments and I scroll through ours and see "0 comments" on nearly every post. Ah well. People are reading and even linking it! :) How important feeling!

I guess I should add that most blogs I read are mainly about the blog-owner's children. And seeing as how we have none, it makes it kind of difficult to keep up with. Adam isn't bothered in the least by this, and I'm sure with enough time and practice, I won't notice as much either. Part of me wants to be a super cool blogger like all the super cool blogs I stalk, but I realize this just isn't going to happen. So I am resigned to being "cool" in my own nerdy little way (or as one of my friends called me yesterday, in my "silly dork" cool kind of way)

One theme of coolness I've noticed among many blogs is the amount of pictures posted per blog. It's not exclusive and I like to read lots of blogs anyway, but I have to admit, I'm a sucker for lots of pictures. Not entirely sure why, but I enjoy it. Cliche yes, but pictures really are worth a thousand words and when a blogger shows the world his/her pictures, I feel just a tiny bit more a part of it.

So I told Adam I wanted to take lots of pictures like the blogs; he just looked at me funny. I'm sure I must be amusing at least most of the time. We went to the mall today, because I am desperate for clothing for work and trying to find a cute vintage/secondhand shop just wasn't happening for me. Oh well; my mom taught me the best of bargain hunting, so we still scored.


While we were wandering around, he saw a stand for Dippin Dots. Now, any of you who are around us at least somewhat regularly, know that we are trying desperately to get out of debt; every spare penny we can find we are trying to snowball. I've never had Dippin Dots before though, and I think we've been doing reasonably well about not spending money on frilly things, so we agreed to share one. Dippin Dots are the BOMB!!! They're so cool!! I thought it would be equally cool to take pictures of us eating Dippin Dots together for the first time. Of course, we don't carry our nice little camera around though and my phone was dead at home, so we decided to test out Adam's camera phone. Lots of phone picture transferring later, we can post them here! yay!Something about cryogenic, sub-zero freezing just makes my day!

This guy is a total pro though. He knew exactly what to get :)

Adam got a haircut, which he is quite happy about. I got two new pairs of capris, a black button down top and a pair of khakis in addition to the Dippin Dots. We then rented an air nail gun thing-y to put up our crown moulding. I would post pictures, but the rest of the room is a horrid mess right now. I've also been playing around with my camera phone after work and I THINK I may have taken some of the first cute pictures since my wedding! Amazing! I wasn't sure if it would ever be done!

Anyway, it's quite late and I think we're quite tired. He says he's not cranky, but I think it's his man-code for I'm really freaking tired, now leave me the heck alone! I would like to aim for posting at least once a week, but we will revisit this idea again later, after all my comment-highs wear off! Have a good night all!!